


Part 22: Justin

by oiuytrewq36



Series: Straight to Number One [10]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:35:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26278018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oiuytrewq36/pseuds/oiuytrewq36
Summary: At this point, I consider myself to be an expert in all things Brian Kinney. It took years, but I’ve developed a finely tuned ability to read his facial non-expressions and interpret emotional declarations disguised as insults even better than Michael can (he’d probably disagree, and he’d be wrong). So when Brian starts acting a little distant and introspective all of a sudden, I’m pretty confident that I know what the reason is: either the big new contract he’s been working on isn’t going well, or he’s fixating on the non-progress on the Pendergrass thing.As a result, I’m totally flabbergasted to find out that I’m not even remotely close to being right when, as we’re having dinner one night, he puts down his fork and says, “What would you think about getting married?"
Relationships: Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Series: Straight to Number One [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1891456
Comments: 10
Kudos: 60





	Part 22: Justin

At this point, I consider myself to be an expert in all things Brian Kinney. It took years, but I’ve developed a finely tuned ability to read his facial non-expressions and interpret emotional declarations disguised as insults even better than Michael can (he’d probably disagree, and he’d be wrong). So when Brian starts acting a little distant and introspective all of a sudden, I’m pretty confident that I know what the reason is: either the big new contract he’s been working on isn’t going well, or he’s fixating on the non-progress on the Pendergrass thing. 

As a result, I’m totally flabbergasted to find out that I’m not even remotely close to being right when, as we’re having dinner one night, he puts down his fork and says, “What would you think about getting married?”

I guess I must stare at him, open-mouthed, for a longer time than is socially acceptable, because he waves a hand in front of my face. “You in there?”

I blink. “Did you just ask me if I think we should get married?”

He sighs. “I’m not- going all weird again, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve just been thinking about it.”

“Okay…”

“Now that it’s legal, we’d be able to have all the benefits that come with the marriage certificate. The health insurance the gallery is giving you sucks, we both know that, and I could provide-”

This must be a very realistic auditory hallucination. “You want to marry me … for _insurance_ purposes?”

He gives me his best rakish grin. “And tax benefits.”

I’m starting to get a headache in my right temple, so I massage that side of my head. Then Brian’s expression changes to something much more serious.

“Right now, we don’t have any legal link to each other. Hospital visitation rights, next-of-kin status, things like that - we can’t get those unless we’re married.”

“When did you get so concerned with all that morbid shit?”

He smiles at me, a little sadly. “After I turned forty. I’ve already had a midlife crisis, so I guess it was time for an existential one.”

I reach across the table to take his hand. “I’m not saying no.”

His smile widens.

“I’m not saying yes, either, not right now. I need to think about this, okay?”

He puts his other hand on top of mine. “I figured.”

***

I realize the next day that I really don’t know that many married people, at least not people who live like Brian and I do. I wander the city for a while until I recognize my old subway stop, in the East Village, and I have an idea.

Quinn is working from home, as usual. They give me a warning look when they open the door, presumably to tell me not to ask for updates on the Super Secret Project Of Which We Do Not Speak, so I decide to just come right out and say it.

“Brian proposed. Sort of.”

They narrow their eyes. “I thought he already did that, like, six years ago. Also, how do you ‘sort of’ propose?”

“It’s a long story.”

Quinn shrugs. “I’ve got time.”

I follow them into the apartment, a mirror image of the place where Frances and I used to live. I sit down on the couch. “He thinks my insurance isn’t good enough, and I could get better coverage through his plan at Kinnetik.”

“Is it?”

“Is what?”

“Is your insurance not good?”

It’s crap, but I don’t really think that’s the important part here. “It’s just that the last time we were about to get married, he got all strange and distant and- like this person I didn’t even know. I think he thought we were going to be _monogamous_.”

Quinn snorts. “Brian? Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious. It was scary. That’s why we called off the wedding - well, it was one reason.”

They sit in the armchair across from me. “Justin, why are you here?”

I’m not sure how to answer that except with the truth. “You and Sam are the only married couple I know who have a life that’s even remotely similar to mine and Brian’s.”

They grin. “Fuck, you came here for relationship advice? I’ll warn you now, if I’m your best shot, you’re screwed.”

“Not so much relationship advice,” I say. “More like a marriage … review?”

“That’s a good one. Uh, I give it ten out of ten? Comes with a handy tax cut included?”

I look at them. “You and Sam have been legally married for a while, right?”

Quinn nods. “The sole benefit of New York State refusing to recognize that I’m not a woman.”

“What’s it like?”

They wait for a moment before answering. “Honestly? Not that much different than what it was like when we were just living together as a couple, except that I know if Sam is some kind of accident, the hospital has to let me see him.”

“That’s it?”

“Sure, if you want to call it that. But peace of mind is a pretty big ‘it’.”

Neither of us speaks for a while. Then I stand up. “Thanks.”

They glance at me as I walk to the door. “Like the sign says. The doctor is always in.”

***

Brian’s at his desk when I get home. I walk over and stand across from him.

“I don’t want a big fancy wedding this time,” I say. “We can’t have you thinking that we’re heading into some kind of suburban white-picket-fence two-point-five-kids monotony.”

He smiles, a little lopsidedly, but doesn’t say anything, so I keep going.

“Just us, a justice of the peace, and two witnesses in a courthouse. I figure that’s unromantic enough to keep you from turning into a pod person again.”

Brian grabs my wrist and tugs me around to his side of the desk, smile broadening. “Oh?”

I slide into his lap, loop an arm around his neck. “But I want a honeymoon. Somewhere warm with lots of hot guys where we can go and fuck each other blind for two weeks without anyone bothering us.”

He grins. “Just so you know, as much as I’m enjoying it, this is the worst proposal of all time.”

“Shut the fuck up, I’m not done.”

I step back off of him and drop to one knee. He stares at me.

“Brian Kinney, you’ve been a pain in my ass in more ways than one for more than eleven years now, but never more than when you’re right.”

He doesn’t even make a smug comment about that, just takes my right hand and holds it in both of his, stroking over my ring the way he does when he’s nervous.

“My insurance does suck,” I say. “And there’s no reason it should, not when we’ve been practically married for years.”

I think he might actually be tearing up, but if I start thinking about that I’ll forget my whole speech. There’ll be time to get all squishy inside (yes, also in more ways than one, very funny) later.

“We’ve done sickness, we’ve done health, richer, poorer, better, worse, and we made it out the other side each time. I can’t imagine anything we couldn't handle now, not when we're together.” I take a deep breath. “So, how would you like to enter into a disgustingly commercialized faux-hetero union with me?”

He doesn’t actually answer, because as soon as I stop talking, he yanks me into a kiss so good that I nearly forget what I’m doing here in the first place. He doesn’t really need to say the words, in the end. We’ve always spoken best through our actions at times like this, and I think he’s made himself clear.

***

We get the marriage license on a Friday morning a month later, after we’ve both secured the time off from work for the following two weeks. Brian insists on dressing both of us up, which is ridiculous considering it’s not actually our wedding day - New York, in its infinite capacity for bureaucratic complexity, requires that the marriage ceremony be performed no sooner than twenty-four hours after the license is signed - but he looks so good in his suit that I don’t bother arguing.

The second we get back to the apartment, he’s on me, kissing me even harder than he did in the elevator while we tear at each other’s clothes. He holds me up and fucks me against the door face-to-face, groaning into my mouth. We slump onto the floor after we come and lie there, panting, until I push Brian onto his back and sit on his dick, leaning forward to nip at his mouth as he laughs and groans in turn, digging his fingernails into my thighs.

We nearly make it to the bedroom for the third round, except that he keeps _kissing_ me, and I just _have_ to shove him against the wall and suck him off, deep-throating him in the way that drives him crazy, rubbing my tongue flat over the underside of his cock, swirling around the head as he moans my name and fists his hands in my hair. I consider it a mark of my moral superiority that I don’t make fun of him as he collapses against me afterwards, especially when he needs my help to even arrange his limbs into something resembling a sitting position in the hallway.

When he’s recovered enough to move independently again, he slings me over his shoulder and carries me into the bedroom while I cuss him out, laughing the whole time. We fall into bed together, kissing and groping, and happily begin the task of fucking ourselves into oblivion.

At some point, Brian stops sucking on my tongue for long enough that I get a chance to think, and I realize that I really, _really_ want his ass. I run my hands over his chest and purr _Roll over_ into his ear, and he goes, not even giving me one of his patented you-better-know-what-you’re-doing looks. I kiss the back of his neck and down his spine, feeling his heartbeat through his skin, and when I get to his perfect plump ass I don’t hesitate, just eat him out as hard as I’ve been craving, slurping and moaning and generally having the time of my life while he howls obscenities into a pillow above me.

I rim him for close to an hour, until his screams have faded to hoarse choking gasps and he’s clutching the sheets with a white-knuckle grip in both hands. When he starts to beg for mercy - as close to begging as he gets, anyway, and I’m too old to be feeling this turned on just from hearing Brian Kinney whining in the way that I know means he’s desperate to be fucked, but _God_ \- I search in the covers until I find a condom, roll it on, and then fuck him the way he likes to fuck me, hard and ruthless with cruel, flawless accuracy. He twitches and shudders silently under me as he comes, panting into the mattress while I murmur soothing nonsense into his ear, riding out my own earth-shattering climax inside him, and I cradle his trembling body to mine and hold him tight as we both pass out from exhaustion.

We wake up sometime in the late evening. Brian has the brilliant idea to move our non-wedding-night celebrations to Element, our favorite club, and we dance there in each other’s arms under the lights and glitter before heading into the back room and giving everyone there one hell of a show. When we’re done, we pick three of the hottest guys from the crowd of gaping onlookers and take them back to the condo. 

There’s a moment, right in the middle of our impromptu orgy, when I’m fucking one of the tricks and Brian’s fucking me and he takes my head in his hands, firm but so gentle, and just kisses me with so much love and passion and joy, and I know that this is the thing we have that no one else will ever really understand, that it doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing or who we’re with because we have this amazing, terrifying, fucking _magical_ bond that transcends all the bullshit expectations that people have about us, what we should be, what we were _supposed_ to be. I breathe “I love you,” right into his mouth, and I don’t expect him to respond because he doesn’t say it when we have other people in our bed, but he does, this time, out loud, before sinking his teeth into my neck, and I just have to throw my head back and moan, nearly shout, in desperate ecstasy over knowing that we belong to each other the way we do.

We send the tricks on their way after the sun rises and then take a long, hot shower, making out endlessly under the spray. We dry off and slide back under the covers, rutting lazily against each other, laughing and kissing and bumping our faces together, bodies intertwined in the tangled, filthy sheets, too tired to do much more than rub ourselves off but unable or unwilling to stop.

Then the alarm goes off.

Brian puts a pillow over his face. “Fuck.”

I squint at the time. “Did we-”

“Forget to go to sleep? You tell me, Sunshine.”

I turn over to look at him. “We should probably get up. Wouldn’t want to miss our breakfast date.”

He rolls his eyes at that, then leers at me. “So, was that more of the kind of bachelor night you were imagining?”

I look at him, covered neck to groin in bruises and lovebites and hickeys, mouth swollen, hair sweaty and tousled, and grin. “Oh, absolutely.”

***

Emmett and Frances think we’re just treating them to breakfast so we can all catch up, which is part of the fun, it turns out. We’re halfway through the meal when Brian gives me a questioning look and I nod. 

“By the way,” he says, “we were wondering if the two of you could do us a favor.”

They look at each other. “What kind of favor?” Emmett says.

“We have this paperwork we’re filing today that needs two witnesses in order to be official,” I say, and Brian stifles a laugh next to me. “It’s a pain, but we were wondering if you might be willing to do it.”

“Sure,” Frances says, ever the professional. “What is it?”

But Emmett has both his hands over his mouth, so I think the game is up.

He takes one of them away to gesture at Brian and me. “You- are you two-”

Brian grins and puts an arm around me, and I lean into him. “Getting hitched?”

“Wait, what?” Frances says.

“The appointment’s in an hour,” I say.

Predictably, Emmett starts to cry.


End file.
